Empire Electric Association will return $1,684,038.87 in capital credits to eligible members. These funds will be distributed as bill credits or mailed as checks in April 2024.
Any revenue remaining after all expenses have been paid in a fiscal year are termed margins. Margins are allocated to members who took service from the cooperative during that fiscal year and are placed into a patronage capital account in each member’s name. This capital, along with borrowed funds, is invested back into EEA system infrastructure.
Allocated margins are eventually returned to members as capital credits. Each year, the EEA Board of Directors reviews the financial health of the cooperative and determines if capital credits will be returned. We retire capital credits and pay them back to the members we serve as soon as it is financially prudent to do so. Returning capital credits to our members is one of the many things that sets cooperatives apart from for-profit utilities. At the February 2024 board meeting, the board approved returning the remaining EEA Margins from 2003 and a portion from 2004. Since incorporation in 1939, EEA has paid members approximately $39.3 million in retired capital credits.